


over the roofs of the world

by toli-a (togina)



Category: Justified
Genre: Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-12
Updated: 2018-09-12
Packaged: 2019-09-16 15:40:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16956768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/togina/pseuds/toli-a
Summary: “There’s more,” Art says, and Raylan feels the weight of those words in his gut. He ain’t going to like whatever it is his boss says next. “He has very specific ideas about the sort of person who can provide protection from the Dixie mafia.”





	over the roofs of the world

**Author's Note:**

> This is from the tumblr prompt, "Boyd has Important Information About Some Mafia Boss that he is willing to share with Marshal Service or FBI. On one condition: he wants them to send Raylan to protect him (in case Bad Guy would want to retaliate). Bonus points for this whole thing going out of control with them hiding in some cabin in the hills without any connection to the outside world, Boyd throwing dynamite at people etc." Since it involves the Dixie mafia, it's set sometime after the beginning of season 3. Title from Walt Whitman's "Song of Myself," "I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

“What’s he doing here?”

“Why, Raylan, how good of you to notice our guest. Why don’t you see if he wants anything: a coffee, a shot of bourbon, maybe some fresh towels.”

“Art, I won’t ask again. What’s Boyd Crowder doing in your office?”

Art rubs his hand together and cracks his neck. Raylan’s tracked down enough fugitives—the ones he hasn’t shot—to know when a man’s stalling for time. He crosses his arms and stares Art down until the other man relents. “Ray-ray, meet our newest informant. Boyd Crowder is going to help us bring down the Dixie mafia.”

Raylan leans back, looking like someone trying to get away from an unsavory smell. “Excuse me?” he says. “He’s going to do what?”

“Help us bring down the Dixie mafia,” Art repeats, fidgeting in a way that tells Raylan this ain’t the half of it. “He says he’s got enough on them that we could bring down Detroit.” Art stops talking, takes a deep breath and looks past Raylan instead of meeting his eyes.

“And what’s he want?” Raylan asks, because it’s Boyd Crowder sitting in Art’s office, and even if Art’s hangdog look hadn’t given him away, there’s no chance Boyd decided to turn state’s evidence out of the goodness of his heart. “Cash? Hair spray? Emulex?”

“Yes, Raylan, we’re paying him in hair spray and dynamite.” Raylan folds his arms and levels the same stare on Art that always works on fugitives. Art looks about as happy as one of ‘em, a criminal with nowhere left to run. “Protection,” Art admits. “He’s afraid the mafia is going to have a hit put out on him, and, frankly, I’m not so sure he’s wrong.”

“I hope he ain’t wrong,” Raylan says, arms still crossed, peering past Art to look at Boyd sprawled easy in one of Art’s office chairs.He twists around, like he knows Raylan’s looking, and gives Raylan a mighty grin and a little wave. “He can tell us what he knows, and then they can come shoot him and we can arrest them. That’s two problems taken care of at once.”

Art sighs heavily enough to bring Raylan’s attention back around to him, though it doesn’t stop him from wanting to flip Boyd the bird. “There’s more,” Art says, and Raylan feels the weight of those words in his gut. He ain’t going to like whatever it is his boss says next. “He has very specific ideas about the sort of person who can provide protection from the Dixie mafia.”

Raylan takes a moment to let those words sink in. Then he starts shaking his head hard enough to dislodge his hat. “Oh, no. No, Art. That ain’t happening. I’d sooner shoot Boyd than I would the mafia! Hell, I’ve already shot him!”

“Well, apparently he’s forgiven that little slip-up, because he says he won’t tell us a damn thing unless you personally keep his sorry ass safe.”

“I’ll fill his sorry ass with buckshot, you give me a shotgun,” Raylan growls, and he suspects Boyd is either reading his lips or merely adept at predicting Raylan’s thoughts, because he takes one look at Raylan’s face and laughs out loud. Art purses his lips. Raylan stares at him, aghast. “You already agreed to this, didn’t you?” he demands, and Art shrugs.

“It was your pride or the Dixie mafia, Raylan. I made a choice. Now go on in there and take Boyd’s statement without shooting him, slamming him through another glass wall, or doing anything else you’ve already done.”

“He slammed me through a glass wall, I’ll have you know.” Raylan stalks toward Art’s office. “So if I slam him through one this time, it’s only evening the score.”

* * *

They wind up in a hunting cabin that belonged to Raylan’s Great Uncle Harold before the Bennetts shot him, because the safe house in Lexington didn’t feel very secure and the cabin is on top of a hill, sightlines in all directions. Boyd complains about the location, complains about being manhandled out of town, complains about the fact that Raylan won’t laugh at his jokes.

“We might be forced to abide together for weeks, Raylan. If my drollery does not amuse, how else would you have us escape the tedium?”

“I can think of one expeditious way,” Raylan tells him, resting his hand on his gun. Drawing it a second later, because there’s movement just beyond them in the trees.

Boyd holds both hands up, an uncertain smile on his face. “Now Raylan, I’m sure you can handle a little raillery. Why, I was just –”

“I’m not shooting you, Boyd,” Raylan hisses, flipping the lights off and dragging Boyd out of the way of the window. “There’s someone outside.”

“Oh.” Boyd crouches down behind the sofa, where Raylan put him, but only for a second. Then he says, “Well, in that case,” and reaches for the briefcase he’d brought with him on the drive and pulls out several sticks of dynamite. “Which side of the cabin are they on?”

Raylan feels a headache coming on. “Why?” he wonders. “Is your plan to blow them up?”

Boyd smiles, a flash of white in the darkness. Raylan remembers that smile from the deep, the flash of Boyd’s teeth and the cry of “fire in the hole!” and the lamps shaking, as though the whole tunnel might collapse under the explosive force of Boyd’s grin. “My plan, Raylan, is to blow their cover, so that you can shoot them. Unless you’d like to devise a different strategy in the few seconds before they no doubt surround this place?”

Blowing up the Dixie mafia does seem like it might be fun, not that Raylan plans to share that with Boyd. Ever. “All right,” he agrees grudgingly. “I’ll do the throwing though. I watched you play peewee football, and you were the worst quarterback Harlan has ever seen.”

Boyd takes umbrage to this and says so, but that don’t make it any less true. So Raylan throws open the window and nearly gets his hand shot off for his trouble, and then hands Boyd the gun to cover him while he pitches lit sticks of dynamite into the trees.

He hits one of the men in the head and Boyd whoops with delight, the same way he always did when Raylan threw a runner out in high school. The man does not have the God given sense to get out of the way of a lit fuse, and that’s one man down and who knows how many left to go.

Eventually, he lets Boyd start throwing the dynamite. Boyd seems awfully excited about it, and Raylan figures if he blows them both up, at least Raylan won’t have to live through Art’s lecture about why allowing criminals turned informants to handle explosives is a terrible idea.

“Fire in the hole!” Boyd hollers, hurling the dynamite out the window, and Raylan watches the flash of his grin. Finds himself grinning back, the same way he always did at nineteen.

“All right,” he says, lifting his gun and gesturing at Boyd to light another fuse. “Let’s show these boys how it’s done.”

It’s what Boyd always used to tell him before games. It’s what he said when Raylan was shaking in the elevator, his first day in the mines. It’s advice Raylan’s lived his whole life by, those words and the flicker of Boyd’s smile down in the dark.

“Let’s show ‘em how it’s done,” Boyd echoes, his smile lit by the burning fuse. And they do.


End file.
